Web Accessibility for Government: Compliance Guide

Government Web Accessibility Has Hard Deadlines

For decades, government website accessibility requirements existed in a gray area — Section 508 applied to federal agencies, and the ADA theoretically applied to state and local government, but without specific technical standards. That changed in April 2024.

The DOJ’s final rule sets WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the explicit technical standard for all state and local government websites and mobile applications. Larger jurisdictions (50,000+ population) must comply by April 2026. Smaller jurisdictions have until April 2028.

These are not aspirational targets. They are enforceable deadlines backed by DOJ enforcement authority and the right of individuals to file private lawsuits.

What the Rule Covers

The DOJ rule applies to all web content and mobile applications that state and local governments provide to the public. This is broad:

• Informational pages — department descriptions, hours, contact information
• Transactional services — permit applications, utility payments, court filings, voter registration
• Documents — meeting agendas, budgets, policies, and forms available for download
• Interactive features — maps, search functions, notification systems

Archived content that is not actively maintained has limited exemptions, but anything a government entity actively provides must conform to WCAG 2.1 AA.

The Scale Problem

Government websites are typically large. A county website might have 5,000+ pages spanning dozens of departments, each maintaining their own content. A state agency site might have thousands of PDFs, forms, and application pages.

Manual auditing at this scale is impractical and prohibitively expensive. A professional accessibility audit of 50 pages costs $5,000-$15,000. Auditing 5,000 pages manually would cost more than most local government IT budgets.

Automated scanning is how government agencies address the scale problem. Scan the entire domain, identify which pages and components have violations, prioritize by severity, and focus manual testing on the highest-risk areas.

Federal Agency Requirements

Federal agencies have been subject to Section 508 since its revision in 2017, which adopted WCAG 2.0 AA as the baseline (subsequently updated to reference WCAG 2.1). The General Services Administration monitors compliance, and agencies report accessibility status through OMB.

Federal compliance has been uneven. GSA’s own reporting has identified persistent accessibility gaps across federal agency websites. The new state and local government requirements are expected to increase scrutiny of federal compliance as well — agencies cannot credibly enforce standards they do not meet.

Vendor and Contractor Implications

Government procurement increasingly includes accessibility requirements. When a government agency buys software, builds a website through a contractor, or licenses a SaaS platform, Section 508 requires those products to be accessible.

Vendors must produce VPATs — Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates — documenting their product’s WCAG conformance. Agencies are increasingly requiring current VPATs during procurement evaluations, and some are making accessibility a pass/fail requirement rather than a preference.

If you sell software or services to government clients, accessibility compliance is a business requirement. An inaccessible product loses deals.

Getting Started Before the Deadline

Government agencies that start now have time to remediate systematically. Those that wait until 2026 face a compressed timeline and competing priorities.

The practical approach:

1. Scan your entire domain — get a baseline count of issues and their severity
2. Prioritize high-traffic, high-risk pages — permit applications, payment portals, and public-facing forms first
3. Fix issues in source code — not with overlays, which courts and the DOJ do not accept as compliance
4. Establish ongoing monitoring — new content and code changes introduce new issues
5. Document your efforts — compliance documentation matters if you face enforcement

A11yProof scans government domains at scale, generates WCAG 2.1 AA compliance reports, and tracks remediation progress. Agency plans start at $199/month for up to 25 domains — covering department sites, portals, and sub-domains.